"Back then, racers were stars!" When Pingo Magduschewski thinks back to the boom years of bike racing, his eyes light up. "In France, the top bikers were better known than many footballers!" And racing was inextricably linked with the name "Sunn" back then. In the stories of the former Sunn importer, one edgy word rises out of the soft clouds of nostalgia: "Race!" - the Sunn brand's recipe for success in a nutshell. Racing was the passion and marketing tool of Max Commençal, the creator of Sunn.
The results lists show how seriously Commençal took the sport: its riders won 70 world championship titles. Between 1993 and 1998, it was almost impossible not to stand next to a Sunn jersey on the podium. It was always the best that Commençal signed - or recruited from its own ranks. Like Anne-Caroline Chaussson, the most successful female biker of all time. She was BMX world champion when she switched to the first downhill bike. In 1993, at her first Downhill World Championships, she won the junior category so convincingly that she would only have been a close second in the main class. She won nine of the ten world championships between 1996 and 2005. In 1993, the year of her downhill debut, François Gachet also switched from the Co-Factory team to the professional camp, where he became world champion in 1994 - and a young lout named Cedric Gracia rode the Sunn jersey onto the podium more and more often. In cross country, Christophe Dupouey and Miguel Martinez added to the brand's fame. In 1998, they were world champions in the junior and main categories. The fact that downhill record world champion Nicolas Vouilloz also flew a Sunn downhill from 1997 onwards is just a footnote in view of this list of glories.
It was the golden age of the French - and Commençal's investment in racing paid off. When the US business magazine "Business Week" recommended a dozen up-and-coming European companies to its readers, the rather small bike manufacturer from Saint Gaudens at the foot of the Pyrenees was one of them. The reason for the recommendation: between 1991 and 1996, sales increased more than tenfold. "Buyers in France see us as a small, local company that really shows the Americans what it's all about," said Commençal at the time, delighted with the patriotism that fuelled both the team and sales. In addition to the racing successes, the independent, comic-oriented design by graphic designer Jean-Pierre Garnier (alias "Zoobab"), the then still exotic sloping geometry of the hardtails and the high level of development of the Sunn Downhill machines - suspension tinkerer Olivier Bossard was already working with computer-aided real data acquisition when others were still learning to spell the word "rebound" - all contributed to a striking image. By the end of the 1990s, Team Sunn had 24 riders of all bike disciplines under contract. Sales on the French market had overtaken competitors Specialized, GT and Cannondale and Commençal was reaching for the stars. "We will enter the Tour de France in 1998 with a road team. And if everything works out, we'll win the Tour in 2000," dreamed Max Commençal at the height of his success. Shortly afterwards, the restless Sunn boss fell into a trap of his own making: in order to finance his expansion, he had already brought other financiers on board in 1988. This sealed his end at Sunn - when he resisted the quick money and the sale of the company, the shareholders pushed him painfully into the straw bales. Instead of tackling the Tour de France, Max Commençal left Sunn in 1998 - "the souflé collapsed", as one French observer noted. The team was dissolved and the manufacturer filed for bankruptcy in 1999. In 2006, a new investor revitalised the brand, but the golden years are irretrievably gone. Even today, a decade after the end of the dream team, the company's website still revels: "We are left with the memory of a magical era full of epic battles between riders and teams. A time that made all fans of bike sport dream."
Text: Jörg Spaniol
